Why Europe isn’t getting too excited by Trump’s criticism of Putin’s bombs

Good morning. A scoop to start: Brussels will investigate Universal Music Group’s $775mn acquisition of independent Downtown Music, officials told the Financial Times, amid concerns the deal will give the industry’s largest player too much power.

Today, I explain why Ukraine’s European allies aren’t getting too excited about Donald Trump’s realisation that Vladimir Putin’s bombs are an obstacle to peace in Ukraine, and the EU’s antitrust chief tells our tech correspondent that tweaking the bloc’s merger rules is her next project.

Have a fantastic weekend.

‘Vladimir, STOP!’

“Not necessary, and very bad timing,” was how US President Donald Trump described the deadliest Russian attack on Kyiv in almost a year yesterday.

European capitals breathed a sigh of relief that after weeks of criticising Ukraine, Trump was finally turning his ire on Russia. But some also noted that the statement raised a question: does the US president think there’s ever a very good time to kill a dozen civilians and injure close to 100 more?

Context: Trump campaigned on a pledge to end Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine “in 24 hours”. Moscow launched a ballistic missile attack on Ukraine’s capital just as Trump was criticising President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for resisting elements of his peace plan.

“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV,” Trump said in a rare admonishment. “Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!” 

Trump repeated his annoyance later in the Oval Office, telling reporters: “We’re putting a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that.”

European officials have spent months trying to convince Trump that Russia is the primary obstacle to peace.

But after days of him condemning Zelenskyy for not accepting a US-drafted peace proposal that would see vast amounts of Ukrainian territory become de facto Russian, they were sceptical last night of reading too much into his statement.

Far more consequential, the officials said, was the tone of today’s meeting in Moscow, where Putin and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff will hold their fourth discussion on how to reach a peace deal.

Indeed, despite his irritation at Putin’s decision to fire ballistic missiles at residential apartment buildings in the dead of night, Trump yesterday said Russia was making a “big concession” by not conquering all of Ukraine, and repeated his stance that Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, would not return to Kyiv.

That’s a demand the FT’s editorial board has decried as “shameful” and comparable to Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich Agreement to appease Adolf Hitler.

Chart du jour: Wedding racket

Wedding costs are getting silly. How did the happiest day of your life become so expensive?

Champions

After fining Big Tech, the next priority for the EU’s competition chief Teresa Ribera is an update of the bloc’s rules for policing mergers, she tells Barbara Moens.

Context: The European Commission, the EU’s top competition authority, is reconsidering how it polices dealmaking to help European companies to build scale, take on global rivals and improve Europe’s lagging competitiveness — a key recommendation from a report by former European Central Bank governor Mario Draghi. 

Ribera, who oversees both green policies and the bloc’s antitrust regime, has been criticised in corporate circles for not paying enough attention to the competition portfolio, one of the commission’s most powerful ones.

Now that a key decision on fining Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s landmark tech rules, has been announced, “mergers should be the next step”, Ribera said. 

This would start with a consultation. “We will come up with this open process to understand a bit better how the market operators and the different stakeholders feel about an update in the guidelines dealing with mergers,” she said.

The main purpose of the EU’s competition services is to understand the market forces, Ribera said, especially in a quickly evolving global context. 

A wide range of sectors are waiting for a political steer on how the Spanish socialist will transform the EU’s traditionally strict competition rules.

But it won’t be a “blank cheque”, she stressed: “Our role is to protect competition, because this is the only way to ensure that we can count on innovation and protect consumers. This may mean that there are things that we need to assess differently.” 

Ribera said it was important to deepen the EU’s single market, but noted that broader political action was needed to deliver results. 

“On many occasions, there are expectations and questions being raised towards . . . competition services that in fact should be tackled through a much more political commitment coming from the national governments,” she said.

What to watch today

1. IMF/World Bank spring meetings continue in Washington.

2. EU chief diplomat Kaja Kallas meets Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Baku.

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